NICHOLAS KITCHEN
Violinist
Nicholas Kitchen is one of the most active and innovative performers in the music world today. He is a solo violinist, chamber musician, teacher, video artist, technology innovator and arts administrator.
Born in Durham, North Carolina, Nicholas Kitchen grew up in a family of musicians. His mother, a violinist, was Associate Concertmistress of the Greensboro Symphony and founder of the Duke University String School. His father was organist and choir-master at St. Stephen's Episcopal church where he helped found a chamber orchestra and oversaw the installation of a magnificent Flentrop Organ. His father also concertized as a pianist while always being on the mathematics faculty of Duke University. Nicholas studied with Giorgio Ciompi at Duke and began performing publicly as a very young child, performing multiple times as soloist with the North Carolina Symphony, and becoming deeply involved in all aspects of the activities of his parents: performing, teaching, organ tuning and registration selection, as well as orchestra and choir preparation related to the orchestra of the Duke String School and the choir of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church.
At 16, Nicholas began studying at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. At Curtis, he worked with David Cerone and coached with such musicians as Felix Galimir and Mieczslaw Horsowski, but very importantly he spent five years working intensively with the great violinist and conductor Szymon Goldberg, as well as being included in the conducting courses of Otto Werner Mueller.
Nicholas has recently been entrusted with an important role continuing the tradition of Mr. Goldberg. Mr. Goldberg's wife, pianist Miyoko Yamane Goldberg arranged so that Mr. Goldberg's Guarneri del Gesù joined its twin, the "Kreisler" Guarneri, in the collection of the Library of Congress. The violins are now both in the collection of the Library, but the Goldberg violin is given on the condition that Nicholas play and travel with the instrument during his career and that Library of Congress and Nicholas and other organizations attempt to carry into the future the extraordinary artistic approach evident in Mr. Goldberg's playing and teaching. This is most directly in evidence in the Szymon Goldberg Seminar and Festival in Toyama, Japan, where Nicholas serves as leading faculty.
At the end of his studies at Curtis in 1989, Nicholas joined his schoolmates and founded the Borromeo String Quartet that went on to study at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Very quickly the quartet won prizes at the Evian International Quartet Competition and the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York. Ever since these first successes, the quartet has been in great demand, performing regularly 100 concerts a year. The Quartet also received the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America, the Martin S. Segal Award from Lincoln Center, and the Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Nicholas has performed in many of the world's most illustrious concert halls: the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Dvorak Hall in Prague, Suntory Hall and Dai-Ichi Semei Hall in Tokyo, the Arts Center in Seoul, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York, Tanglewood and Ravinia Festivals, the Spoleto Festival in Italy and the US, to name just a few. Very important ongoing residencies and relationships have been with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Triton Arts Network in Japan, the Library of Congress in Washington, and the Taos School of Music in New Mexico. Nicholas has been extremely energetic in combining teaching activities with his concerts. His interest in reaching out with music resulted in his doing multiple tours under the auspices of the US Information Service visiting most of the countries in Latin America for performances and teaching residencies. Nicholas has taught at the New England Conservatory of Music since 1992, when at the conclusion of their studies the Borromeo Quartet was asked to become Quartet-in-Residence.
Nicholas has performed an extensive range of repertoire, giving cycle performances of all six Bach Solo violin works, all the Beethoven violin sonatas, all the Beethoven Quartets, all of the Bartók Quartets and all of the Shostakovich Quartets. He has also been involved in the creation of many new works, including a premiere of the violin concerto by Stephen Jaffe, which was written for Nicholas. Nicholas is also a memeber of Music from the Copland House which endeavors to continues the legacy of Aaron Copland by encouraging constant exploration of contemporary music in America
He has been fortunate to collaborate with many great artists: Peter Serkin, Joshua Bell, Christopher Eschenbach, Leon Fleisher, Richard Stoltzsman and Josef Suk are just a few. He has also done less "classical" collaborations such as when the Borromeo quartet collaborated with Turkish traditional musician Erkan Ogur in Istanbul.
Nicholas has worked closely with broadcast stations such as WGBH in Boston and National Public Radio in Washington and has recorded for numerous record companies: Image Recordings, Denon, Bridge, Arabesque, Albany, Centaur, and others. In addition to these more traditional activities, Nicholas has pursued an innovative approach to recording which led him to found a new type of recording company. In 2003 he began Living Archive, a recording venture devoted to capturing and communicating the essence of live music. Building his own knowledge working with leading recording engineers, Nicholas has developed a procedure for capturing the sound of concerts in high fidelity and video in high definition. Thousands of CDs and DVDs have been made available for purchase to audience members allowing them to continue their experience with the music they have just heard in the live concert. Activities of Living Archive can be seen at www.livingarchive.org. Living Archive is already producing high definition BluRay DVDs of concerts, ready for the next level of media quality that will be part of all of our lives.
Embracing the new possibilities of computer animation, Nicholas has developed his skills in drawing and graphic work to create animated material to be projected during live performance. These creations are intended to encourage in the audience member the boldness to approach even the greatest music with an imaginative spirit. He has created Childsplay - a video-composited film with Beethoven's Op. 135 Quartet Scherzo; and Ludwig's wig, a program about Beethoven which culminates in an abstract animation along with the second half of Beethoven's Grosse Fugue.
Nicholas first effort in multi-media was in creating a project in collaboration with violinist Midori and the Cotuit Center for the Arts. Original artworks were created in an Art Day at the Cotuit Center for the Arts, all inspired by the poetry and music of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. A projected film coordinated by Nicholas was projected in synchronization with a live performance of the Four Seasons with Midori and the Borromeo Quartet. This was a Gala event for the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, an organization which Nicholas was artistic director of for six years. In Cape Cod in addition to traditional chamber music concerts, Nicholas created many adventurous programs including a collaborations with jazz drummer Rakalam Bob Moses and Haitian drummers as well as a program made entirely of electronic music.
Nicholas has played for many years on the A.J. Fletcher Stradivarius a violin purchased for long term loan to Nicholas byt the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina. In the present situation where Nicholas is able to play the Goldberg instrument, the Foundation has graciously allowed the violin to be used by Kristopher Tong, the second violinist of the Borromeo Quartet.
Summer 2008. Please destroy all previously dated material.